Resistance: Pandora, Book 3
Page 36
Outside, she climbed into a huge, open vehicle. Single shots were drowned out by its big engine rumbling to life. Only Hermann sat beside Emma. The doctor, two medics, and two Russian soldiers, one at the front and one by the open rear door, lined the opposite wall. Jump out! Her pulse pounded.
As the slow, bumpy ride began, Hermann asked, “Emma, how do you feel?” Tree branches scraped across high metal sides, distracting a guard. A flood of frigid air drenched the benches lining the walls of the open compartment. “How do you feel?” he repeated.
“Fine,” came from memory. “How are you?” seemed like the thing to say.
Emma couldn’t read Hermann’s expression. “Well, I sure wish I’d left on the helicopter with Pieter.”
The doctor said something in French, shouted, stood, and banged on the metal bulkhead. The vehicle halted. The doctor exited at the rear. Hermann peered out a side hatch and gasped. “Mein Gott!” Emma followed his gaze. Oil workers knelt, eyes dilated, and removed hardhats on a command given in Russian. An officer raised a pistol to one man’s forehead—bang! “Mon dieu!” Hermann cried. Although the workers bore signs of fighting—bloody faces and limbs, torn clothing—they were serene and composed, staring up at the muzzle unflinching as each was shot in turn.
Hermann jumped at each bang, muttering in French, his face contorted.
The Russian soldiers on the opposite bench stared at Emma from behind respirators. They would be distracted if their headgear were knocked askew. Deep breathing helped her resist the impulse to lunge, prematurely, for their rifles.
Outside, the French doctor shouted, “Murderers!” in English, at the Russians.
“Do you remember our deal, Emma?” Hermann asked. She nodded. A medic raised a camera. Hermann said, “Subject, Dr. Emma Miller, epidemiology professor, Johns Hopkins University, contracted SED six hours ago.” Date, time, location. “Dr. Pieter Groenewalt departed for Geneva two hours ago with eleven brain specimens. We are evacuating to Anadyr in an open-air vehicle to lessen infection risk. Russians are killing all SED survivors except Subject. Repeating questions one and two, Event Log Twelve.”
Dive across the aisle between the two soldiers and maybe neither would fire. Claw the face shield loose and yank the rifle from one soldier’s lap. If the other hesitated, she could fire first and kill them all. But if the second guard was heedless of harming his comrades and opened fire inside the packed vehicle, she would surely die. Plus, there were all the soldiers outside. It took all her willpower not to obey the intense instinct she felt to flail at the men who threatened her life.
Hermann still flinched at each report from the Russian officer’s pistol. “Emma, you told me about,” bang, “about a lunch at your club after tennis. The busboy was a classmate.” The rear door remained open. Bang. A headfirst dive outside. The woods were thick. “Do you remember how you felt when he came to your table?”
“Embarrassed,” she replied from memory, uncertain what that word actually meant.
“Yes,” Hermann typed—bang!—and flinched. “Why were you embarrassed?”
“Because… Because… She was too fatigued to compose an answer.
Bang!
The soldier by the rear door checked his safety. It was on the left, beside the trigger. “Were you embarrassed because he was handsome and you were sweaty?”
It had been a cool day. The boy had bad acne. “No.”
“Maybe,” Hermann ventured, “you were embarrassed because you were rich and played tennis all summer, but he was poor and cleaned tables on his vacation. Is that it?”
She had a trust fund that would pay her millions in a few years. The boy must have been working because he needed money. But… “No,” she replied.
Significant looks were exchanged. Take the scissors protruding from the tall medic’s pouch. Jab them through the soldier’s face shield. Grab his rifle. Flick the safety to “Fire.” Kill everyone. Too many steps. The second soldier would certainly fire first.
“One more question,” Hermann said. “When you shot Sgt. Travkin, the man infected while saving your life yesterday, with his own gun, how did that make you feel?”
“Terrible.”
“Okay. Do you know why you felt terrible?”
“Because…” She couldn’t even recall what feeling terrible meant, and tried to recreate the feeling. He entered the tent. She shot him in the face. There was nothing “terrible” or anything else about it.
The doctor climbed aboard, cursing in French. The rear door slammed shut. The vehicle slowly passed the site of the ongoing slaughter. The French doctor, medics, and armed Russian guards swayed as the vehicle’s treads ground across the terrain, and ducked as sticks and leaves rained down from low branches. Now? Emma smelled smoke.
Everyone’s attention was drawn through hatches to the growing pile of burning bodies. Now? In the distance beyond the pyre, a small floatplane rose into the pale blue sky. Now? But no one other than Emma seemed to notice the departing aircraft as more bodies were tossed into the crackling flames. Now?
Pandora: Contagion
MADNESS HAS GONE VIRAL
The world is not the same since the Pandoravirus outbreak changed the essence of human nature. Those affected by the disease are consumed by adrenal rage. They erupt in violence with the slightest provocation. And now, infected scientist Emma Miller is forging them into an army of merciless killers marching across America.
Emma’s twin sister, neuroscientist Isabel Miller, is desperate to avert the chaos that threatens to engulf civilization. But her team has its hands full staying one step ahead of the civil unrest that’s ravaging the country. Noah Miller, the twins’ brother, thought he had created a safe haven for his family in the mountains of Virginia—until the arrival of Emma and her infected followers proved the folly of his plans.
The Millers’ conflict is just one of many sweeping the nation. A nation divided into factions. A nation on the precipice of all-out civil war…